The Notebook of Trigorin

From the master twentieth-century playwright Tennessee Williams - an adaptation of Chekhov's The Sea Gull

The Notebook of Trigorin is faithful to Chekhov's story of longing and unrequited love

Set on a provincial Russian Estate, its peaceful environs offer stark contrast to the turbulent lives of its characters

Constantine, a young writer, must compete for the attention of his mother, a self-obsessed, often comical aging actress, Madame Arkadina, and his romantic ideal, Nina

His rival for both women is Trigorin, an established author bound to Arkadina by her patronage of his work, and attracted to Nina by her beauty

Trigorin cannot keep himself from consuming everything of value in Constantine's life

Only in the final scenes do all discover that the price for love and fragility can be horribly high

But if the words in The Notebook of Trigorin are essentially Chekhov's, the voice belongs firmly to Tennessee Williams

The dialogue resonates with echoes of the themes Williams developed as his signatures - compassion for the artistic soul and its vulnerability in the face of the world's "successfully practiced duplicity" (Act I)